


Room at the Inn

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Gen, Post-World War I, Sad Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 12:03:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19927777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: After a damn bad war, Crowley finds himself on a sofa in a bookstore. Aziraphale is surprisingly used to this.





	Room at the Inn

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: “Do these dark circles under my eyes say nothing to you about how I’m doing?” (cigaretteburnslikefairylights)
> 
> A follow-up to [“Working Holiday”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19374796/chapters/46189681). This was supposed to be of a similar length, but then Feelings happened.
> 
> If you're over on Tumblr, please consider following me at [gaslightgallows.tumblr.com](https://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com) for more fic, reblogs about writing, and lots of randomness.
> 
> I also write original fiction! You can find it at [aflinley.com](http://www.aflinley.com).
> 
> Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥

Crowley had been living in Aziraphale’s bookshop for about a week, since the angel had found him passed out on a bench next to a duck pond in Saint James’ Park, and in that time, they hadn’t really talked much. The shop had stayed closed, so there was no one to disturb them – or worse, discover them – and Crowley spent most of his time lying curled on the sofa (it was a different sofa from the last time he had visited the shop, but it was just as worn and comfortable as the previous model and as the eventual replacement would be), his back to the world. 

Sometimes he found a drink on the little table at his head – usually tea or cocoa, Bovril a few times, once something that smelled vaguely like weak beer mixed with sweetened milk – and occasionally a sandwich or some biscuits. He never touched any of them, but they didn’t go to waste (not even the Bovril, which Aziraphale wouldn’t actually drink but would separate back into hot water and beef extract). Sometimes he felt a soft warm hand gently resting on his shoulder, and he couldn't help himself from leaning into that a little bit. 

He didn’t sleep. He would have liked to sleep, and sleep and sleep, just sleep away the rest of the twentieth century and maybe a good chunk of the twenty-first. But he hadn’t allowed himself to sleep since about nineteen-seventeen. 

He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. 

So he just existed, in the dusty safety of the bookshop and of the angel who had saved him (in a manner of speaking). 

But at the end of that week, when he heard Aziraphale setting a drink down at his head, Crowley finally sat up. His legs and his stomach muscles ached from seven days curled in the fetal position, and he was tired of looking at the faded paisley upholstery fabric. He groaned, and let the old knitted afghan slide from his shoulder, found his dark glasses and put them on, and held out his hand for the mug. 

Aziraphale sat down in his desk chair, across from the sofa. He sat slowly, and Crowley had the impression of unoiled hinges. “How are you doing?”

“Well... I’m alive. Ish.” Crowley curled his hands around the warm mug and inhaled the scent of cocoa and milk. “You?”

“My dear fellow, do these dark circles under my eyes say nothing to you about how I’m doing?”

Crowley actually looked at Aziraphale, and was startled to see that he wasn’t exaggerating. He looked _tired_. “Sorry.”

“At this point, I’m becoming inured to it. I wish I could say you were the first Bright Young Thing I’ve had in here to dry out, but...” 

“Running a house of mercy now, are you? What’s next, saving young streetwalkers from a life of sin?”

“You know perfectly well that there’s nothing sinful about sex work.”

“Yeah, but saving Magdalens looks so _virtuous_ on your CV.” Crowley took a swallow of his cocoa and grimaced. “Who’d you have in here for detox?”

“Mostly former soldiers. Some Red Cross workers. Some with friends they can’t be seen in public with. Almost all of them are the children of old friends from my club days. None of them should strictly be able to remember my association with their fathers, of course, but some memories are harder to wipe away than others. Mostly, though, they remember the bookshop more than me.”

“And they come to the bookshop because...?”

“Because they have nowhere else to go.”

“But... their families...”

“Ah. Yes. Their families. Their highly respectable families.” Aziraphale shook his head and sighed. “None of whom wish any further associations with their sons, daughters and other children.”

Crowley’s grin was brutal and stretched only as far as the corners of his mouth, leaving his eyes untouched. “I see. No mercy for the drunks, the addicts, or the inverts.” _No mercy for the ones who question, oh no, never._

“In most cases... I’m afraid not. So I keep the inn open.” Aziraphale’s returning smile was wry and intolerably sad. “I’ve had a busy decade, since the end of the war.”

“At least you haven’t had me here to distract you from your benevolent works.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.” And then, while Crowley choked on his cocoa, he continued, “I was thinking of going away for a while. You know, close up the shop, take a bit of a holiday.”

“Oh. Uh... for how long?”

“I don’t know. A few months. A few years, perhaps.”

Crowley felt the dark empty maw inside of him, which had just begun to consider healing, split open wide open. _But I just found you again... but you just found me..._ “Do you good, I expect. You’ve been here since, what, eighteen hundred?”

“Apart from a few weekend jaunts here and there, yes. I was thinking of taking a cruise to Australia. I have one or two acquaintances there, and I just had a memo from my head office about how no one’s checked in there in a few decades and I drew the short straw by virtue of not being at the staff meeting.”

“It’s not like you to miss a meeting,” Crowley frowned. “What happened?”

“There was someone on my sofa.”

“...Ah. Right. Well, you don’t have to deal with that anymore.” He stood up, wobblily. “I’ll just—” Just what, exactly? “—I’ll go and rent a new flat somewhere and get back to work. Hell’s probably waiting on my report—”

“About the influx of illicit substances, their effects which you’ve experienced first-hand, and the human abuse thereof that you’ve been encouraging since 1918?”

“Yes to the first, yes to the second, never actually got around to the third.”

“Don’t worry about it. I filed that report for you four days ago.”

Crowley’s jaw dropped, causing his glasses to slide down the bridge of his nose and clatter softly to the carpet. “You _what_?”

“You were in a bit of a delirium when I brought you here, and you muttered something about having a deadline to meet. You seemed so worried about it, so I...” Aziraphale made a vague gesture. “Took care of it. Hell was very impressed with your work; I think they’re sending you another commendation.”

“Oh, bully for me... angel, how’d you even know what to tell them?” Aziraphale spread his hands eloquently. “Right, all of your broken Bright Young Things. You probably know more than I do about the stuff humans poison themselves with, at this point.” Crowley swirled the rest of his cocoa around the bottom of the mug, and then handed it to Aziraphale to finish. “Look, you go on holiday. Go to Australia, have a good time with the kangaroos and the billy tea. Anything comes up here that needs a bit of a miracle done to it, I’ll take care of.”

“That’s very kind of you, Crowley—”

“Don’t, you know I—”

“—but I was rather hoping you’d come with me.”

Crowley was very glad he’d already gotten rid of the mug, because otherwise it would have fallen from his suddenly limp hands. It might’ve even broken, but he could fix the mug, and even get the resultant chocolate stain out of the carpet, but he wouldn’t have been able to resurrect the cocoa itself and that would possibly have made Aziraphale the saddest of all. 

“You want me to go to Australia with you.”

Aziraphale stirred the cocoa to reheat it and sipped. “Yes.”

“So... month-long ocean voyage, however-long actually in Australia, and a month-long ocean voyage back.”

“Yes. And we don’t have to come back immediately, if we don’t want to. I haven’t been to Southeast Asia in donkey’s years, and I’m starting to work on a craving for Chinese food. And it’ll be a very fraught ocean voyage, I’m sure. Lots of bored wealthy socialites and discontented crewmen. You’d have plenty to do before we even got there! I mean, er, _I’d_ have plenty to do,” Aziraphale very uprightly corrected himself. 

For the first time in well over sixty years, Crowley felt interested in life again. “And no doubt plenty of trouble to get yourself into.”

“Oh, undoubtedly. You’d really be letting the side down if you weren’t there to see it.”

Crowley grinned. “Alright, angel, you win. Temptation accomplished.”

“Now _really_ ,” Aziraphale fussed. “There’s no need for that. No need at all.”

But he preened as he said it, like a well-fed swan, and looked altogether too pleased with himself.


End file.
